Your Pomona
by Lentiba
Summary: Heir to her father's titles and lands, Hermione's hand is widely sought after. But she caustically holds out against all suitors, hoping to marry a childhood friend for love. When her father dies, her stepmother fulfills his sarcastic promise made in anger, to forcibly marry his willful daughter to the first man who visits the estate.


When Cormac McLaggen takes her hand to kiss it, she allows it. When he guards her throughout the night, glowering at every other man at the ball, she pretends not to notice it. When he talks inanely and incessantly of his family's wealth, she endures it. And when he tries planting a kiss on her mouth, she slaps him soundly.

Cormac isn't very enchanted with her after that. He glowers at her, livid and red. He probably would strike her back if Ron doesn't immediately intervene, breaking away from his own dance with Lavender Brown to wrench the other young man away.

Ron and Lavender have all the time in the world now that they were formally betrothed, so Lavender doesn't complain when Ron spends the rest of the night sitting with Hermione. But she can feel Lavender's eyes fixing themselves onto the back of her skull as she and Ron leave the dance hall together. But Hermione is happy to abandon the rest of her dance card for Ron.

"What a prat," Ron laughs. They sit together on a stone bench in the moonlit gardens, shoulder to shoulder. He rubs an open palm over his eyes and forehead, a smile sprawled across his mouth.

Hermione considers telling him how she feels as she watches him kick his feet against the gravel. Ron's not the most handsome or the most learned man she's ever met, and as the sixth son of an ennobled but impoverished family he's lacking in serious prospects. But she knows that she loves him.

"Ron - "

"They won't all be like that," he says suddenly, interrupting her. He looks at her seriously, his bright blue eyes earnest. "Hermione, you're beautiful, you're good, and you're the smartest girl I've ever known. You'll have lines of suitors stretching from your father's castle to the sea, I just know it."

Had he anticipated what she had meant to tell him? Either way, Hermione loses her nerve. She can only nod. "Thank you, Ron." She really isn't as shaken up by the incident with McLaggen as he seems to think. But it was nice just having Ron sit beside her and talk throughout the night. No interruptions. No other people. They had fought all the time as children, and Hermione didn't think that they had really ever grown out of that - it was simply that they didn't spend enough time together to even have the opportunities to argue anymore.

In the light of morning, she disappoints Father with the news that there will be no McLaggen-Granger alliance. But as she was his only child, he is willing to be patient with her. Soon, a private meeting with the Malfoy heir is arranged.

A short time after, Draco Malfoy sits in the drawing room in the seat across from her, his arms folded across his chest. He is admittedly a little more handsome than she remembers now that he has grown into his sharp, pale features. But he isn't any more interested in her than she, in him - which was to say: not at all. When neither party is willing to put in the effort, the arrangement quickly becomes a match of attrition. He takes to subtly belittling her with pointed remarks, entertaining himself with personal attacks. It is what they were accustomed to - since childhood - and she is quick to return fire.

When he and his chaperone, Bellatrix Lestrange, storm out of the manor (Malfoy's pride has always been a fragile creature), Father is once-again disappointed. The Malfoy family is old and wealthy, more prestigious than the Grangers. To marry into the Malfoys… it was the next best thing to marrying your daughter to a king.

Ron visits the manor the next day - not as a suitor but as a friend. Her father's house is one of the castles along his route back home from Lavender Brown's family's estate. He is a familiar face, and the servants are fond of him, most having known him since he was a skinny, gangly child.

It wouldn't be decent to speak with him in her private chambers, so Hermione suggests a turn around her father's gardens. The tall, green hedges afford them a sense of privacy that lends her courage. She's been ruminating and thinking to confess ever since after the night of the ball.

"Are you crying?" Ron peers at her closely, suddenly alarmed. They had been walking together, arm-in-arm, when they came upon the centre of the hedge maze.

"I am not," Hermione protests, turning her face away.

"You are," Ron accuses, anger seeping into his voice as he leans into her. "Well, your eyes are wet." He scowls, drawing back. "Is it Malfoy now? Or does McLaggen still upset you? Whoever it is - I'll throttle him," he promises passionately, taking her unresisting hand in his.

"Why?" Hermione asks when she cannot hold herself from asking. She's nervous and it shows. "Why are you so sweet to me, Ron?"

His red brows furrow, confused by her question. The answer - to him - is obvious. "You're my friend, Hermione. I care about you - a lot."

"That's not enough," Hermione confesses quietly, a bitter breath of a laugh following her words.

"What do you mean?"

"I love you, Ron." Finally throwing caution out the window, she turns to embrace him, her arms flung around his body. After years of keeping her composure, always obeying her father's commands, Hermione feels that she cannot be judged too harshly for this moment of impulsivity. "Why do you think I cannot stand men like McLaggen? Couldn't humour him for even a second?" She slackens her arms to pull back and meet Ron's blue eyes. "And Harry... I never loved Harry - he was my friend too, but I never loved him. Not like I love you."

She still thinks that her closeness with the Potter heir was the first step in the series of mistakes and misunderstandings leading up to Ron's bethronal to Lavender. Never mind her father's condescending opinion of Ron's low birthright (Ron could be a friend, a good and loyal friend, but he would never be worthy of her father's lands and titles.)

"Hermione, I'm engaged to Lavender," Ron points out slowly. But he doesn't break away from her embrace.

She takes that as encouragement. Lavender has not completely won his heart. "I don't care. My feelings for you remain the same." Hermione pauses, amending, "So long as my feelings are not felt in vain."

It's a long, frightening silence before Ron's confirmation comes. "They are not." He pauses a moment, quietly confessing, "You know I have always cared about you, Hermione." Ron pulls away from her, only to lean back in with a soft kiss.

Her heart feels that it might explode with happiness. They kiss passionately, desperate in the way of doomed lovers with a short timeline. Hermione wishes fervently for the day to never end, that evening never approaches and brings the night with it.

When Ron's hands take too many liberties, she stops him. "Wait," Hermione pants between breaths. Ron is impatient as any man, but he respects her request, grimacing. "Tell your father you won't marry Lavender. Tell him you want to marry me. If your father makes the proposal, I will tell my father that I will accept no husband but you," Hermione urges him. "I'd sooner go to a nunnery."

"My family and Lavender's have made their promises," Ron reluctantly informs her, his voice soft against her ears. Marriage has never been between two people.

"I am a better match than Lavender Brown," Hermione points out with no arrogance, only pleading for Ron to see her method. "She has an older, male cousin who is likely to inherit the lion's share of her grandfather's estate. I am my father's only heir. Your father knows this." She squeezes his hand. "Speak to your father. I will speak to mine if your father only sends the word."

"Your father refused when my father proposed Fred for you," Ron reminds her.

"Fred is Fred." Dead now, too. He had been kind and witty, but not for her. "You are not Fred. I didn't _love_ Fred. I love _you_. I will fight for you, if you will only fight for us."

It takes some encouragement but Ron agrees to the plot. He will speak to his father and make amends to the Browns once the engagement is formally called off. (Perhaps Lavender could marry George instead.) Once enough time has passed for the entire incident to be decent, Ron's father could send hers the word.

Hermione knows Ron fears Lavender's rage and tears, so she acts shrewdly. She continues to inflame and tease Ron's desire for her in the few days before he has to return to his parents' estate. Hermione trusts Ron, but she's concerned that his parents have already become too committed to the marriage alliance with the Browns. It will be months before their scheme comes to fruition - even in the best of circumstances - so in the meantime Hermione keeps her sanity by putting Ron out of her immediate focus.

Unaware of her secret plans, Father invites Blaise Zabini and Theodore Nott to the manor - as if to save time by having her scare off both men in one fell swoop. Blue-blooded and well-connected, Zabini and Nott are both associated with Draco Malfoy (but not his friends - Malfoy only kept morons like Goyle and Crabbe for company).

She sees now that Blaise Zabini had clearly inherited his mother's legendary looks - and her reputation for promiscuity. The finely-dressed young man sits languidly on the blue divan, his long legs seeming to take up all of the leg room between them. He is Hermione's age, younger by a matter of a few months, but he is already a father to two bastard daughters from two different common women. It is also clear that he doesn't think too much of her looks and Hermione is only too happy to return the opinion.

His companion, Theodore Nott isn't as vain, but that is only because he had no reason to be. The heir of the Nott family is wealthy and well-spoken, but he also looks much like a tall, overgrown rabbit with his gangly build, noteable ears, and bad teeth. If he didn't already know these things, he certainly does now - she implies something of the sort after he laughs at one of Zabini's cutting jokes at her expense.

Both men soon depart in a few days' time; Zabini calling her a frigid shrew under his breath.

Father is mortified, angrily asking her: "Can't you speak to a man without insulting him?"

Severus Snape, who was neither titled nor landed, is the next man to try his luck. He is much older, old enough to have fathered her himself, and his face is coloured a sickly pallor. His teeth are yellowed and uneven, and his dark hair unkempt. He is the extreme foil of Zabini - in the sense that he didn't seem to care for his own appearance nor for her opinion of it. How he had been invited to their home, she could not fathom.

Perhaps Hermione could have overlooked his looks had his nature not been as equally unpleasant. He is bitter and caustic, and often seems to be looking plainly through her whenever she speaks to him. Hermione doesn't like that at all.

At one point, when he mentions his own ignorance as to how he had been alone for so long without a wife, she sarcastically remarks, "I wonder why." It is one of her few only lines during their meeting. Rude but nothing too scalding. Hardly warranting of an outburst. But in fact, it is the last thing Hermione says before Snape starts an eerily calm, cold tirade against her and "the proud, hateful women" like her. If she has annoyed him so easily with three words, he could never survive a marriage with her.

This particular encounter tires her, but it doesn't frighten her. If her father would pretend he was giving her a choice in her husband - her future - then she would shield herself by exploiting that illusion for as long as she was allowed to. If she couldn't be with Ron, she would have no other man.

* * *

I actually wrote this about a year ago, but I never had the time to do much else with it until now. I'm still in the process of editing and rewriting the remaining chapters, but I hope you enjoy. As always, I appreciate constructive criticism and reviews!


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